I think that the reasons why the green light on your flash (indicating 
correct exposure) did not light up are this:

>I was to the side of the stage, about 25 feet from front and center.

and this:

>I had the flash in "high shutter speed" mode... and manual exposure set
>on 250 f2.8

As you mention, at 1/250, your Elan IIe requires high-speed sync mode, 
which requires your flash to emit a series of pulses of light to 
synchronize with the shutter as the shutter opening moves across the film. 
This requires the flash to emit more light than a "normal" (without 
high-speed sync) flash operation. With 800-speed film, it worked OK, 
because the film required less light for a correct exposure. But your 420EX 
flash was not powerful enough to produce enough light to correctly expose 
the 100-speed film.

If you could have reduced your exposure time to 1/125, you would have stood 
a better chance of getting the green light to come on, because at that 
speed your Elan IIe would have been able to synchronize with the flash 
without requiring high-speed synch. This would have allowed your 420EX and 
your Elan IIe to work together much more efficiently. But perhaps 1/125 
would have been to slow to stop the action on stage. As your lens was 
probably already wide open to capture the maximum light at f/2.8, the only 
other two options (apart from a faster film of course) would have been a 
more powerful flash (but perhaps even a 550EX would not have been powerful 
enough) or a camera body that could synchronize with the flash at 1/250 
without using high-speed sync (only the 1-series EOS bodies can do this) or 
perhaps 1/200 (the EOS 3 can do this).

Gerry



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